


Lessons Learned

by nymja



Series: The Sad Grandpa Trilogy [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Force!Ghost Kenobi, Gen, Rey Kenobi Theory, Tumblr fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 12:49:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5497643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymja/pseuds/nymja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“You’re never going to get anywhere if you don’t learn</i> patience<i>, first.”</i></p><p>“I’m the strongest knight here!”</p><p>The Jedi looks around the room, eyeing the skull of his grandfather with pointed distaste. <i>“Yes, well. Good work.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Lessons Learned

He first attempts it when he’s sixteen. It’s Snoke’s idea. He thinks it will help him increase his connection to the Force, to his legacy. Kylo Ren has never been one for meditation, but he’s desperate enough to try—his lightsaber isn’t working as it should, and he lost his third sparring match today against one of the newer recruits.

Kylo sits, mask on, and stares at the warped helm of Darth Vader.

“Grandfather…”

He inhales. “Show me.” Closes his eyes. “Show me what I must do to become as strong as you were in the Force.”

“ _A curious relic._ ”

Kylo’s head nearly pivots. In the corner of his room, sitting by his workbench, sits a robed figure. His fingers absently running over the beard on his chin. His white eyebrows are raised. He is…blue.

“ _Not at all what I expected, for the company of a young Jedi._ ”

“I’m no Jedi.”

The man’s expression goes thoughtful. As if he’s _humoring_ him. “ _Ah, my mistake. Of course not.”_

Kylo doesn’t know what to make of this, beyond the fact that this is a vision of the Force. His heart thrums. Could this be-?

“Who are you?”

The robed man smiles. “ _A complicated answer for a simple question.”_

“Are you…” Kylo swallows. “Are you Vader?”

The smile fades from the old man’s face. His eyes go back to the helmet. “ _For now, I will say I am nothing but an old man.”_ He looks at Kylo. And Kylo feels as though the mask means nothing. _“One who is quite interested in how all of this will resolve_.”

“You’re not Him!” Kylo hisses. He moves into a stand, grabbing his lightsaber and going to swing it at the _thing’s_ head-

-but the vision is gone. And Kylo’s lightsaber cuts through the chair instead.

\--

A week later, he has a new chair and he attempts to meditate once more. His desperation is growing, stronger than ever—but his grandfather has still not spoken to him. He has not shown him the way, how he is going to lead the Knights of Ren.

 _“You’re doing it all wrong,_ ” comes a voice to his side once more.

He turns his masked head. This time, there’s someone else—someone different. Younger, perhaps only a few years older than himself. With short hair and a strange, thin braid running to his shoulder. He wears the robes of a Jedi, and his arms are crossed. His face is screwed up into an expression of annoyance, and Kylo can almost hear the tap of his incorporeal boot against the grating of his floor.

“ _What? It’s true.”_ The boy sits down next to him, legs crossed. _“Whatever is your master_ teaching _you?”_

Kylo glares. “Supreme Leader Snoke-“

“ _You can’t meditate if you’re sitting like_ that _, you realize.”_

“I don’t want help from you!”

“ _Well, you clearly need help from someone. Be thankful I’m stopping, I have my own training to do.”_ The young Jedi juts his chin at Kylo’s knees, “ _Come on. Sit right. Certainly you know at least this much?_ ”

Kylo clenches his teeth. “Go away!”

_“You invited me!”_

“I did no such thing!”’

The young Jedi looks like he’s about to yell right back, but he pauses. Instead, his eyes close and he takes a deep breath (do visions even _need_ to breathe) and when he opens them again, Kylo sees the stare of an older man.

 _“You’re never going to get anywhere if you don’t learn_ patience, _first.”_

“I’m the strongest knight here!”

The young Jedi looks around the room, eying the skull of his grandfather with pointed distaste. _“Yes, well. Good work._ ”

Kylo extends his hand, and _shoves._ The young Jedi sends him an exasperated look before he disappears.

\--

He doesn’t try to meditate again. And it’s five years before he sees the Jedi again.

\--

“Please! We’ve done nothing to go against the Order-“

Kylo stalks past the man on his knees, his lightsaber drawn. He doesn’t have the care or patience to listen to the villagers of this backwater planet. The intel Hux’s people have collected is enough to solidify the connection between the remote town and the recently formed supply lines of the Resistance. This man will be dust in moments—not even enough to make a ripple in the Force that surrounds him.

“Sir,” Captain Phasma—newly appointed—turns to face him. Her blaster cradled against her chest. “We’ve detained the leaders for questioning.”

“Good.” Kylo Ren ignites his lightsaber when the man starts to cry out to him. It silences everyone. “Leave them for questioning, and the rest-“

Within the detained villagers, there is a man. He is kneeling with them, and wearing the robes of the Jedi. Kylo swallows.

“Sir?” Phasma asks.

Kylo watches the man, as he lifts his head.

He is not the old man. Nor the young one. Somewhere in between—his beard, once brown perhaps, has streaks of gray and his eyes look impossibly sad.

_“It’s not too late, Ben.”_

Kylo recoils. His foot falls a half-step back. “Kill them.” He whispers, gaze not leaving the man. The man who knows a name he shouldn’t.

“All of them?” Phasma asks, more concerned for logistics than compassion.

“Just kill them!” Kylo spits, swerving on his heel and making his way to where the leaders are detained. He hears the abruptly silenced screams soon after.

\--

 _“So uncivilized…_ ”

Kylo comes back to base to see the man there. Staring at his grandfather. “Stay back,” he warns.

The man turns, fingers rubbing over his beard much like the older one. “ _You realize there’s very little I can do to him at this stage, yes?_ ”

“How did you know that name.”

The man goes back to staring at his grandfather. The light from the room reflects off of the black helmet. _“I’ve heard it once before._ ”

“Where.”

 _“That’s a complicated answer.”_ The man turns and when he looks at Kylo, his face is formed in an expression of sorrow. “ _What you did to the villagers will not leave you. Such actions have echoes._ ”

“So be it.”

 _“You’re young,_ ” the man says, as if realizing it for the first time. He steps away from the helmet, his blue aura flickering somewhat with the movement. _“Too young for the damage you seek to cause. I’ve seen it before, Ben-_ “

“ _DON’T USE THAT NAME!”_

The lights flicker.

The man stares. “… _Ren, is it?_ ”

“Kylo Ren.”

_“I see.”_

“What do you want.”

The man closes his eyes. _“I heard a calling. One signal, through the noise. Soon to be two.”_

Kylo frowns. _Two?_

 _“I thought,”_ the man says slowly, “ _You might have a need of me._ ”

“You’re Jedi.”

_“Once.”_

“Leave.”

The man sighs, and his hand seems to rest, for a moment, on top of the helm. “ _…This is not the path he would have chosen for you.”_

“Leave!”

He does, his last words filling the volume of the room.

_“We expected better from you.”_

\--

“There is something plaguing you, Kylo Ren.” Snoke stares down at him from his throne.

Kylo grits his teeth, but keeps his head bowed. “There is…a disturbance.”

“What sort?”

“A vision.”

Snoke is silent for a long time. And Kylo knows he can sense the presence of the old man, the Jedi, and the younger one as clearly as he can.

“Ignore it,” Snoke decides. “It will be gone from memory soon enough.”

\--

He does not know why those words make him feel alone.

\--

Three years pass, and he sees him again.

Kylo is sweating. And tired. And the Stormtroopers are pulling away the body of the last Knight of Ren to challenge him for his position.

It’s the old man this time. Arms folded in the sleeves of his robe, as he stands on the sidelines—watching, as the Knight’s corpse leaves bloodtrails behind it on the training room floor.

“ _I have seen many demonstrations of cruelty, over the years.”_ His head tilts. “ _But never one so endless as the battle between student and master.”_

“And which were you,” Kylo Ren hisses. The room is clearing quickly, as it usually does after one of his examples.

“ _Both, for a time.”_ The old man follows him, taking a seat on the bench. “ _And also cruel when it became necessary.”_

Kylo Ren pauses. His fingers curl into his palm. Something about the man makes him instinctively angry. “You are not my grandfather.”

 _“No. Not yours._ ” The old man’s eyes gleam with some sort of joke Kylo does not have the energy to decipher. _“Though I knew him.”_

Kylo’s attention sharpens, and he turns to face the old man. He sits there, patiently, as Kylo begins to pace in front of him. “How? How did you know him!?”

“ _As a student. Then as a master._ ”

The sound of Kylo’s breath being drawn in is sharp enough to fill the room. He strides over to stand before the old man.

“Your name. Tell me your name.”

 The old man smiles. _“You, I think, may call me Ben.”_

His stomach drops as rage flares in his chest. And the old man vanishes just in time for Kylo to cleave in half the bench he was sitting on.

\--

It’s years before they meet again, after an awakening.

\--

Kylo Ren is lying, maskless, in the med wing the next time he sees him _._

It’s the youngest version, this time. Angry and scowling, as he paces across the foot of his bed.

“ _How could you!”_ The boy Jedi finally settles on, brows drawing further into a V. “ _He was your_ father!”

Kylo ignores him. A droid begins to apply bacta to his face, clawed in half by a lightsaber. He thinks he’ll keep the scar she gave him.

“ _You--_!”

“Do you have something meaningful to contribute,” Kylo whispers. “Padawan Kenobi?”

“ _This is not the Jedi way._ ” He finally settles on, arms crossed over his chest.

“I am _not_ a Jedi.” He’s tired, now. Too tired to scream. The droid brushes his shoulder, another one works on applying patching his side together.

“ _You were meant to be.”_

“The Jedi—“ he hisses as the skin of his face knits back, “—are _dead._ ”

“ _Rey will stop you.”_

His eyes move to the padawan. _Rey._ His mind thinks of the girl—the one who gave him such a souvenir. Who reminded him of the power to be found in pain.

“She’s welcome to try,” he mutters. His eyes dart up to the ceiling as the med droid performs a graft.

When he looks back, the padawan is gone.

\--

He wakes up to the middle-aged man, neither old nor young.

“What do you _want._ ” He growls from his bed.

This Obi-Wan seems to take his time considering the question. His fingers move through his hair.

“ _To help you.”_ He settles on.

“I don’t want your help.”

 _“No,”_ the Jedi agrees, “ _But you_ are _going to need it._ ”

\--

He thinks about her. More and more. How she’s most likely with Luke now, training. Growing in the Force. How she has something that belongs to him, and he wants it returned.

\--

 _“You mean to train the girl?” Ben_ asks, watching as Kylo Ren goes through his daily exercises.

“Yes.”

“ _To what end_?”

“She’s strong in the Force.” Kylo Ren clenches his fist, and a section of the wall crumples.

“ _Is that your only reasoning?”_

Kylo swerves to face the commentator. “Speak your mind. I have no patience for riddles.”

“ _It is a marvelous existence, to be strong.”_ Ben states, looking up to meet the masked gaze of Kylo. “ _And a very lonely one. That is why the Jedi became an Order. That is why Luke sought his father. We are all luminous beings, as Yoda once said. Drawn to the light between one another.”_

“And remind me, how did your last Order fare? Or that of your student’s?”

Ben’s ghost looks beyond him. “ _Not as well as we would have hoped.”_

“Mine will be greater.”

_“It does not do well, Ben, to learn from shadows.”_

“As opposed to ghosts.”

Old Ben smiles. “ _Perhaps I am still learning, too.”_

\--

They meet, again. Her and him. It’s inevitable.

She’s stronger this time, more focused. Less afraid. Less lonely. He tries to pull at the dark, frayed edges that once haunted her mind and only finds them mended. She grieves—for Han, of all people. For Luke. For the names and stories of other students who do not belong to her. _Scavenger._ He thinks, his thumb turning on the ignition of his blade. _Hoarder._

She has taken a legacy that does not belong to her. She has taken his grandfather’s lightsaber, and has the audacity to fight with her own construction instead.

Rey stares at him, and ignites her weapon. Twin, blue blades emerge from either side of the staff. His heart thuds in his chest as he calls upon every negative thing that lays between them. He takes off his mask, because it unnerves her to see the scar she put there. The potential damage she can unleash.

“I know your name.” Her shoulders square. “I know you’re not what you wish you were, not really.”

He smiles, eyes darting from her staff, to her face. “You’ve built your own lightsaber.” He takes a step forward. “How much of it is stolen, I wonder. How many legacies are you attempting to claim?”

“None,” she says, “Just my own.” She brings the lightsaber up in a stance he recognizes well—it’s one of Luke’s forms. “You, I think, have enough for everyone.” Her eyes glint. “ _Ben._ ”

His lip curls, and in less than a moment they’re dueling.

\--

He wakes up in the medbay. To his least favorite of the three.

 _“She is going to win every time, you know.”_ Padawan Kenobi is not quite smirking, but he senses it.

Kylo’s breath comes in a rasp. His chest aches. There is a phantom limb where his leg used to be. “She can’t. Kill me.”

 _“That’s because the Jedi don’t kill-“_ Mid-sentence, the padawan morphs into the older (but not the oldest, not _Ben_ ) “- _that is a strength, not a weakness.”_ The Jedi Kenobi stands next to his bed, eyes traveling from the top of his head to where his leg suddenly ends. “ _Compassion is always a more difficult burden to bear.”_

He inhales. His fingers curl into a fist. “You must be happy, to see me here.”

The Jedi shakes his head. “ _No. Not at all.”_

“When. Will you. _Leave._ ”

The Jedi pulls back his robe, revealing the aged face of Ben. “ _Whenever you no longer have need of me, Ben…”_ The old man sits beside Kylo Ren, as the med droid begins to fit him for a prosthetic.

There’s the motorized sounds of whirs and ticks, and soon Kylo feels nothing but _pain._ Bright and blinding and raw. He screams, as the false leg is implanted without anesthesia.

Old Ben stays. His eyes downcast and the smallest of frowns on his face.

“… _Until you no longer need fear the dark.”_

 


End file.
